🐈
» Forums » Clients » Re: Fake Chinese Freelancers
Page options
289bb8cf
Community Member

Fake ** Freelancers

Dearest Upwork -

 

I am a premium employer and between my two accounts, I easily spend 400k a year.   I have found that my support as a premium employer has become non-existent.  I have always had great account managers but now they all seem to have disappeared and I have no direct point of contact at Upwork.  I cannot imagine any other business having a client who spends as much as I do and not providing them direct access to an account manager.  But that's not what I am writing about.  

 

My bigger concern is the rampant and OUT OF CONTROL issue of phony freelancer accounts.  I recently tried to hire for a job and out of 5 interviews, all 5 were not in the country they claimed to be from.  Some claimed to be in East Europe and others claimed to be in Canada or the United States.  I voice verified with them and they were all Chinese.   I have been reporting this issue for years, yet Upwork seems to not want to do anything about it.  It seems like it would be pretty simple to weed out these fakes, given that I found 5 of them on ONE job post.  I think that Upwork is turning a blind eye to this problem because they are still getting paid on work these phony developers do.  This is a total disservice to people like myself who depend on Upwork.  By ignoring the issue you are allowing employers to get scammed, the very people you depend on for your business.  

 

At any rate, here are a few of the fake Chinese Profiles for my most recent job posting.  Notice that ALL these profiles say rising talent or top rated:

 

**Edited for Community Guidelines**

 

 

129 REPLIES 129
jzader
Community Member

I have spoken to four senior Ruby on Rails developers in the past two days. All four had a thick Chinese accent, would only agree to talk by Skype audio (not video), and were evasive when I asked about their physical location.

 

This has been happening for years. I've been encountering it personally, and also one can see it from forum posts going back to at least 2014.

 

I have reported multiple such fake profiles to UpWork in the past, using the "flag profile" feature. Never have I seen such a profile disappear, as a result. And they keep working: One fake China guy I talked to today had earned over $300K on UpWork.

 

While UpWork claims to have a process in place for dealing with this, it's clearly not working well enough. Meantime, UpWork makes money off the work these fraudsters perform.

textoad
Community Member

Yeah, the only way around I found is to have a video chat, but who knows who’s actually doing the work in the background.

crart
Community Member

What if I personally never do video chats? Not even voice chats? it's just the way I communicate. It seems I will need lobotomy to completely change myself to be able to prove I am not fake, fun times are coming. Disregard for introvert people that are focused on hard work seems to be the sign of these days and I'm not blaming you personally, but this gambling platform that allows scammers and fakes to prosper. Procedures? Verification? I have been verified twice with success obviously because I don't play someone I am not, no idea what's the problem to start verifying registered users BEFORE they can start sending proposals or, for balance, post their projects. I get that UW "staff" is more than half bots now but these bots are badly programmed (as I experienced today with "help" and "support") and it seems there is no will to change the situation other than just let this place collapse. I can't believe the platform requires real people when they themselves offer bot attitude 😂

BojanS
Community Manager
Community Manager

Thank you for reporting this, Joshua!

 

Could you please click on my name and send me a PM with more information about the accounts you're referring to? I'll share those with our team for further investigation and will take action as per our internal processes.

 

Thank you!

 

~ Bojan
Upwork
gilliad
Community Member

I can create any job and find fake profiles easily... its not just a few accounts.

mtngigi
Community Member


steve r wrote:

I can create any job and find fake profiles easily... its not just a few accounts.


Many of us freelancers have asked Upwork to stop "auto-accepting" profiles to improve the verification process at the very start ... that suggestion falls on deaf ears. It's not easy reading this thread ... in fact, it's infuriating.

gilliad
Community Member

So completley agree with you, I posted this so long ago and people are still reporting the same issues. Im wondering appart from increasing our fees for service, where is the value proposition....

 

When will upwork fix this issue once and for all, reported as long as 5 years ago...and still no solution...

gilliad
Community Member

Hello Ethan I started this post a few years back, when i discovered exactly the same issue, and in my case ALL the developers were CHINESE, chinese germans, chinese russians, chinese ukrainians...

 

Upwork promised to look into it and improve the verification process, but in the end I guess no follow up and not supprised , no result either.

 

Fees have increased and customer service has diminished.

 

Sorry to hear about your problems, but you will find many such as me, who has experienced fake profiles, if they fake information about themselves , who can we trust the integrity of their work?

 

The best solution i have is to arrance a voice call with them, generally they cant fake an accent and know very little about the country listed in thier profile. That is the only solution i have found to this problem for now...

 

sampub
Community Member

I got the same. I wasted hours while looking for a mobile dev with these fake profile (at least 5).
I don't mind hiring Chinese at all, but what I don't understand is why do they need to take such effort to lie? One told me that Chinese are no longer accepted on upwork because of Trump ban. Obviously a lie, but I really need to understand their motivation.
gilliad
Community Member

I find the Trump Ban funny, its easy to blame someone else, anyway on mobile developers have had very good luck with india and even paskistan, genereally better with individuuals.

re: "Obviously a lie, but I really need to understand their motivation."


Their motivation is money.

 

They think they can earn more money by posing as Americans or Europeans.


Preston H wrote:

re: "Obviously a lie, but I really need to understand their motivation."


Their motivation is money.

 

They think they can earn more money by posing as Americans or Europeans.


That's totaly missing the point. These frauds dont have the skills they claim on the profile. If you saw their 'real' profile they would be too junior to hire for the job you need.

 

Frankly I dont care why they are motivated to cheat. They steal our most precious commodity, Our time! Both in interviewing all these fakes before finding a genuine prospect and in getting scammed and having to fire them because they just arent up to the job, then starting the hiring process all over again.

 

It's in Upwork's best interest to helps save that time or, eventually, we'll lose trust and find another platform.

re: "Frankly I dont care why they are motivated to cheat."

 

I'm certainly not excusing any freelancers who are cheating. Somebody asked why they do it, and I answered that person's question. That's all.

 

You are correct in your view that it doesn't really matter WHY they are cheating system. If somebody steals $500 from you... does it REALLY matter if they did it because they don't like you personally, or because they don't like your mom, or because they wanted to buy an XBox?

 

Preston H wrote:

re: "Frankly I dont care why they are motivated to cheat."

... Somebody asked why they do it, and I answered that person's question. That's all...



Your answer was what I was addressing. If the person had the skills I needed and wanted more money by pretending to be from somewhere else then I wouldn't have fired them. I fired them because they didnt have the skill. I would not have hired them if I saw their real profile.


That is the reason they are motivated to cheat.

 

The rest about not caring about the motivation was a rant about the situation.

I do not blame you for being frustrated.

Upwork is the industry leader, and thus the biggest target of cheaters.

 

It's an "arms race." Upwork adds new security and identification verification protocols, and cheaters work their way around them.

 

Obvously Upwork doesn't WANT to have any clients disappointed by their experiences hiring freelancers. But you are quite correct in understanding that despite Upwork's efforts, it does not provide guarantees.

Hello Uri, Its true the fake programmers just want to get hired, regauirless of skill level or their ability to do the job. They will however make up every excuse while they ate getting paid to do a job.

Hi Steve,

Exactly why I want to avoid them!


Two recent examples:
job1: 81 proposals , 9 shortlist, 5 interviewd(before I started demaning video), ALL were chinese posing as Europeans. Didnt hire anyone. Posted job2 instead.
job2: 55 proposals, 8 shortlisted. 6 refused video call. Remaining 2, we'll see when I interview them.

 

The noise to signal ratio is terrible. How am I supposed to find the good freelancers I know are out there?

 

This is why I was calling out Upwork on their Gatekeeping. What are they doing to get these frauds off of their platform? Making it easy to find and hire great freelancers is at the heart of Upwork's value prop. Right now they are failing!

lukhi_parth
Community Member

Hi Ethan, 

 

There are lot of genuine programmers available who suffered due to this kind of fake profile.

 

Regards,

Parth

mengxun
Community Member

Hello Ethan, 

 

Kudos for this post.

 

I have been a member for over five years but busy with full-time teaching and other tutoring and coaching activities have just begun to seriously use Upwork and Freelancer to prospect. 

 

"Out of the blue" I received a solicitation from a Freelancer client who was looking for a "partner" in the US to help him develop his web business.and paying $250 for the "partnership." Wanting to know what that entailed, I Skyped chatted the guy and he emailed me his proposal.

 

The long and short of it was that he wanted to pay someone in the US to give him a false US identity by allowing him to use an account in their name. Not being really conversant with what currently goes at Upworks at Freelancer regarding this I had no idea what either of  their policy on fake or dummy accounts was.

 

Your post did me a big favor. I will mail this guy and say, "Thank you, but too busy. You might consider moving to the US."

 

Best regards,

 

Wendel  

 

 

Hello.

I just found out this post and now I understand what was happening.

Today someone looks fake on LinkedIn contacted me and asking me to rent Upwork accounts.

He sent me to this website and telling me I can earn lots of money with this method.

Showing me I can rent this accoutn via anydesk / team viewer per $200 / month.

**Edited for community guidelines**

 

 

**Edited for community guidelines**

 

That account is fully ID verified and video call passed, have several jobs in progress!

Reading all these blogs now I understand what is going on.

These fake accounts are so problematic.

 

Hi Julian,

 

I shared this with the team for investigation. If you'd like to share more information, please send me a PM by clicking on my name. I'd be happy to include it in my report to the team. Thank you!

~ Joanne
Upwork
65ac1384
Community Member

Hi, We hired a developer who claimed he was Canadian, found out he is a Chinese developer. Hired another one as well who claimed they were Ukrainians in Canada. My CEO was suspious when they would not show their faces on Zoom and heard background noise in Mandarin and called them out.  My CEO spoke to them in Ukraian since he knows that language and they would not respond.

 

You folks claim you do research on folks who are on here.  It's a shame that you folks don't do any research to identify who's listed here. I would caution everbody to research before you hire. Ask to seem them on Zoom. They also wanted to get paid using playlane which does currency converison. 


Prasad M wrote:

Hi, We hired a developer who claimed he was Canadian, found out he is a Chinese developer. Hired another one as well who claimed they were Ukrainians in Canada. My CEO was suspious when they would not show their faces on Zoom and heard background noise in Mandarin and called them out.  My CEO spoke to them in Ukraian since he knows that language and they would not respond.

 

You folks claim you do research on folks who are on here.  It's a shame that you folks don't do any research to identify who's listed here. I would caution everbody to research before you hire. Ask to seem them on Zoom. They also wanted to get paid using playlane which does currency converison. 


Upwork does not claim to do research on any of the freelancers on the site. Verification is not the same as research or a background check.  Freelancers who have earnings have been verified through a video call process. Unfortunately, this does not stop all fraudulent activity. Freelancers can still "sell" their account after video verification. However, they are often found out because clients see something off and report it, or other freelancers notice it and report the account. 

 

You are absolutely right that both clients and freelancers should fully vet each other before working with each other. Upwork is not a head hunting agency that vets freelancers for you. 

re: "You folks claim you do research on folks who are on here. It's a shame that you folks don't do any research to identify who's listed here."

 

Upwork does not claim to do research on freelancers.

Upwork does not claim that it vets freelancers.

Upwork DOES have multiple identity verification protocols, and its identity verification is quite a bit more stringent and strict than you will find on most other sites. But many of these protocols are not put into place until AFTER a freelancer has been hired and and begins earning money.

 

It is difficult for a freelancer to maintain an account while presenting false details about their location and name. But this DOE NOT mean that all freelancers encountered by clients are presenting accurate information.

 

Should clients do additional vetting and checking, such as through Zoom and other means?

That depends on the client, and what their interests are. For some clients and some projects, I don't doubt that this is important. For others, it may be irrelevent. I have hired many artists on Upwork. They received assignments and submitted their work and I was pleased with the work and I closed the contracts. Were any of the freelancers I hired last week from Indonesia and Europe and the United States and other places lying to me about their names or where they live? I will never know, and it doesn't matter. These were short-term projects which are now over. But for a development project that is long term? That might matter.

gilliad
Community Member

Hi There, I completely agree with you,if the freelancers lie about where
they live and who they are, which shows dishonestly. What makes you think
they will deliver a quality product you can build upon.

Hi Prasad, 

 

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. If you see a violation of the Upwork Terms of Service, we encourage you to report it. Here's how to send a flag. Alternatively, please feel free to send me a PM with more details so I could forward your report to the team for review.

 

~Andrea
Upwork
shaunkahler
Community Member

Premium service for high-spending accounts is a great feature that should be explored further. This is *exactly* where Upwork should invest its resources right now, and I hope this post encourages them to push into this *hard*.

82c1259c
Community Member

Hi there is indeed a problem, I wrote an article about : 

**Edited for Community Guidelines**

ottawadeveloper
Community Member

A client reported to me that he found several profiles where most of the text was stolen verbatum from my profile.

I found 5 cases. Reported this to upwork support. Within a few days 2 became hidden and 2 more appeared.

I have been back and forth with upwork support for 5 days now. I feel like i am talking to a parrot.

They mark my issue as 'solved' but 7 very obvious fake profiles copied from mine remain. 

Support claims they have taken action accoring to some procedure and it is done.

Plainly the procedure they use does not do anything to enforce the upwork terms of service they keep referring to.

Allowing fake profiles to steal business from legitimate freelancers using fake information is not helpful to anyone except the fake. They may take some money from clients but are sure to fail as they clearly do not have the experience they claim.


Michael C wrote:

A client reported to me that he found several profiles where most of the text was stolen verbatum from my profile.

I found 5 cases. Reported this to upwork support. Within a few days 2 became hidden and 2 more appeared.

I have been back and forth with upwork support for 5 days now. I feel like i am talking to a parrot.

They mark my issue as 'solved' but 7 very obvious fake profiles copied from mine remain. 

Support claims they have taken action accoring to some procedure and it is done.

Plainly the procedure they use does not do anything to enforce the upwork terms of service they keep referring to.

Allowing fake profiles to steal business from legitimate freelancers using fake information is not helpful to anyone except the fake. They may take some money from clients but are sure to fail as they clearly do not have the experience they claim.


With one of the phrases of your profile I have found 4 profiles that have copied your text. The curious thing is that 3 of them have the same name and two of them have the same photograph.
It seems that they still do not review much what profiles are being created.
I'll send the links to a mod for review and deletion.
Let's see if they do something fast.

Hi Michael,

 

Thank you for reaching out to us. I shared your concern with the team handling your case and one of our agents will follow up with you on your support ticket as soon as possible to assist you further.

 

~ Nikola
Upwork


Nikola S wrote:

Hi Michael,

 

Thank you for reaching out to us. I shared your concern with the team handling your case and one of our agents will follow up with you on your support ticket as soon as possible to assist you further.

 


Well, since you have appeared so quickly, for your known that there are also profiles that have it copied in the specialized profiles.
So you will have to search further.

Hi Maria,

 

Thank you for sharing additional information. I would like to let you know that I shared all information you provided with the appropriate team and they will look into this further. 

 

Thank you,

~ Nikola
Upwork
ab270579
Community Member

I always believe in looking at the incentives. Here, Upwork has no incentive to let scammers flourish and every incentive to ensure clients like you are happy. For that reason alone, I don't think this is being ignored.

762d984d
Community Member

I also have run into a lot of fake, or odd accounts. Many say they are in one place but are then in India or Pakistan (that is what I am running into on several) Others are "new" to Upwork, but what really seems to be happening is they are taking contracts outside of Upwork to either not pay fees, or stack clients and you cant tell. 

 

los123
Community Member

I have found the same thing.  Ill post a job for USA only, yet a lot of the responses are clearly people claiming to be in the US but they are in other countries like pakistan. 

re: "I have found the same thing.  I'll post a job for USA only, yet a lot of the responses are clearly people claiming to be in the US but they are in other countries like pakistan."

 

It is a real problem.


The overwhelming majority of freelancers in that country are honest and professional and are upfront about where they live. Upwork clients are happy to hire freelancers from that and other countries.


Freelancers who live in a country and lie about their location give the honest freelancers in that country a bad name. Which is unfair, but it's true. If 99% of the freelancers in "Country X" are honest about where they live, but a client encounters 5 freelancers in a row from that country who are dishonest about who they are or where they live, our naturally pattern-forming minds are going to notice a trend.

ottawadeveloper
Community Member

so i reported these plagerized profiles over a week ago to upwork's 'My requests'. They send me boilerplate text that tell me nothing about what they are doing. And the scammers remain. I went to the 'My Reqests' section to reply to the ticket they call 'SOLVED'. BUt it seems they have lock the tickets somehow so i cannot. I guess they dont care and dont want to be bothered with people reporting fake profiles that violate terms. 

Hi Michael,

 

Thank you for your message. I am sorry to hear about your experience with the team. You can create a follow up ticket by responding to the email notification for the support ticket sent to your registered email address on Upwork account. 

 

Thank you,

Pradeep

Upwork

i created a follow up ticket. upwork closed the previous one and marked 'solved'.

I reported fakes in pakistan aug 24. I have given the info to find these fakes but there are always ones there that are copies of my profile. Sometimes 7 at a time. 4 at the moment.

I find the responses from Upwork to be rather insulting saying they are taking action but then nothing happens. 
I have lost confidence in upwork. Reponses seem to be canned responses they paste again and again. 

i find upwork to be offensive now, like they dont care if their terms are violated and treat legitimate contractors as **Edited for Community Guidelines**. Looking forward to finding a better way to work.

Latest Articles
Learning Paths